Abel's Seed
by Miharu is Harukas Love Child 2
Summary: "There are still corpses left, but if the villagers keep their mouths sealed, no outsider will ever be able to guess what transpired [in Sotoba]." Seishin's transformation into a werewolf. Canon


Abel's Seed

"There are still corpses left, but if the villagers keep their mouths sealed, no outsider will ever be able to guess what transpired [in Sotoba]." Seishin's transformation to werewolf. Canon

**A/N:** I really really _really _like Shiki. I can't decide where my sympathies lie, however...The characters are so well-rounded as an ensemble. It's great ^^"

**Disclaimer**: I do not plagiarize! However, I have taken the liberty to directly quote the manga in the dialogue. So, all the dialogue is straight from the manga. These are from the final stage, chapter 41 of the manga. The summary is also a direct quote from the first page of chapter 41.

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Seishin's intuition was at least as keen as Toshio's, keener even.

That didn't stop him from falling into the same trap as every other villager in Sotoba. To understand the strange happenings and feel utterly helpless…that was the default emotion. Disbelief coupled with fear left each and every villager hopeless. But maybe that's exactly what Seishin wished for: that the town would suffer from the same inescapable despair that it inflicted on him.

He knew. Even before he entered the castle, even before the hunt began…he knew. Every time Sunako's frail frame descended on his arm, begging him for the red sustenance he so readily offered, he knew. He didn't need to die and resurrect to know the kind of monster that lived deep within his heart.

Seishin Muroi always knew. Sunako knew. Even Tatsumi sensed it and left Seishin to guard the most precious Sunako and her ideals.

Maybe the first time he realized it was when he descended to the operating room of Ozaki's hospital and witnessed the young doctor splattered in blood and joy as he stood over his wife's twice-dead corpse.

Or maybe Seishin knew before the incidents even began, before the Kirishiki brought the plague upon Sotoba. He'd already begun his book, _Shiki_, months before the first killings. His interest in most things occult far outdated the arrival of vampires. Perhaps, more than the village's reputation for burying their dead, more than the location and heavily isolated population, perhaps more than anything else, Sunako was drawn to Sotoba because of him. Seishin was a man already forsaken by God. Sunako had drawn that much from his earlier writings. A living human who understood the despair of those forsaken by God: Muroi-san was a treasure, her treasure.

Sunako didn't murder him, and yet, to her, he was her greatest sin. It was evident in just how fast his blood was changing. His anemia hadn't even progressed to make him bedridden; rather, the large gash in his side from the attack at the temple seemed to rip the most strength and life from his body. His world went black as he fainted from blood loss, but his heart never stopped. Seishin Muroi never died. He didn't need to.

He was already one of them.

He knew. He'd known for a long time.

God's hand had never been on him. That he was a priest was merely a formality. Nothing about the man reflected the peace or the love promised to the religiously devout. Neither he nor his father fulfilled their temple duties for personal accountability: they were just puppets who acted for the comfort of the villagers. Their existence was meant to be a comfort for the village and yet, they were the the ones in need of salvation. In the end, sympathizing with the _enemy _made Seishin an enemy of man and all his fellow villagers. But the young priest was not like Abel. His heart did not stop beating and the breath did not leave his body. Sunako and her kind were Abel. The shiki were as Abel was. Surely, Seishin was Cain, the one who's life God prolonged so that his suffering could be prolonged. Toshio's face flashed into his mind as he regained consciousness. Ozaki had been there at the mansion, leading the raid as Muroi drove into the woods. What exactly began the rift between his childhood friend and he? There was no limit to the guilt. The doctor's eyes had been full of accusations. Seishin was a traitor. His body was evidence.

The priest regained his auditory senses enough to hear footsteps. The air was dry and scorching with heat around him. Could it be the intense drop in blood pressure that aided his hypersensitivity to the summer's warmth? No, it was more than that. Seishin's senses became far more acute than should have been possible. He could smell wood burning and immediately understood. It was only just nightfall and the villagers were blocking all forms of escape. They'd set the forest on fire.

"Muroi-san! Muroi-san!"

Sunako's voice.

He couldn't move yet as his strength had yet to return. It was like being a prisoner in that body, fully aware that Sunako was running, that the trees were burning, and that hunters were close. Minutes passed as he urged his motor skills into function. Slowly the sensation returned to his fingers and he gripped tufts of grass. Time crawled. Seishin crawled. Blade by blade of grass he moved.

Instinctively he knew where she would run.

And when his body fully awoke, he grabbed the knife he'd dropped, the same knife he'd been stabbed with, and lunged at the night.

His private sanctuary had been violated. Sunako was nailed to the wall, bleeding like an Old Testament sacrifice. Abel's blood sacrifice.

Purely on instinct, Seishin sliced through her attacker, making short of the giant killing machine who'd orchestrated much of the hunting. Big Boss went down, joining his mother and son in death. The priest could only look at the little girl with sadness. She tried to be the savior to the shiki. The sanctuary's wall was not a crucifix. She was not the Christ. Sunako's afterlife was only a joke compared to that.

He pulled the stakes from her hands and legs and forced her on her feet, urging her to stand. The vampire could only cry and resigned herself to her fate, begging the man to die with her and erase their blasphemy.

"You bear no sins," came the authoritative response.

"Eh?" She was caught off guard.

"Murder is a sin belonging to the world of humans. You are not human, thus human notions such as sin or punishment for one's sins are not applicable to you."

His words were of little comfort. Sunako's dream of a world where shiki could live in fear...it was deader than any of the lifeless corpses in her camaraderie.

"That's even crueler then, Muroi-san."

"Yes, all we have left to us is despair. Having been exiled from the human world, we can only keep walking across the endless dark wasteland."

It was out of despair that Cain killed Abel. It was out of despair that Seishin implored Sunako to live.

They stood side by side, the vampire and her werewolf, the queen of living corpses and her faithful servant. He took her hand, the hand of the small frail murderer. But she wasn't a murderer. Neither was he. To be a murderer implied that they were conscious beings who served the morals and laws governed by society. Shiki didn't abide by laws that applied to God's chosen race. They were their own phenomena, a cruel copy made from the dust. Not having God's power to create something from nothing, Satan took the decomposing forms and reanimated their bodies. In some ways, they were parasites that leached off the originals, but in the long run, they were neither inferior nor superior to their human counterparts. Rather, the true difference was not in what they did or what they ate, who they killed or didn't. The shiki were merely hyper aware of the disparity that comes with Godless existence. They were like the fallen angels under Lucifer: cursed to wander the earth without hope of salvation. And the existence was beyond lonely.

Sunako simply didn't want to suffer that existence alone.

For that one undead, that princess of demons, that breathless shell that understood his infinite pain, Seishin dared to exist. Thrusting the bleeding child on his back, he ran for the main highway. His feet carried him away from the burning hell of trees, away from the remaining lynch mob, away from the birthing place of his despair. He was Cain and she was Abel.

The humans who hunt the shiki have their own pain and grief, to be sure, but true death brings an end to that suffering. They will never understand the depthless despair that accompanies rebirth. They will never understand the excruciating sorrow of a blasphemous existence. If they could understand, they'd never hunt the shiki.

_The shiki still live, in a hell among the living..._

That's their true punishment.

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**A/N**: Thanks for reading! Please leave a review if you have a moment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on who was right in the end, the humans or the shiki.


End file.
